Sharp County record., 1887-05-19

tion of some of our religious newspapers
Thov Ee on YOUR center table TO
curse YOUR children, and blast with
their internal fires generations unborn
Won find these books in the desk OF the
school miss, in the trunk OF the young
man. in the steamboat cabin, on the taDle
of the hotel reception room. You see
Iightin YOUR child's room late at nlgnI'
You suddenly go in and say:
"What are you doing'"
81 am reading"
| "What are you reading"
| "a book"
You look at the book; it is bad pook'
'Where did you get it''
| 81 borrowed it."
Alas, there are always those abroad
who would like to loan your son or daugh-
ter bad book. Everywhere, every"heree
an unclean literature. | charge upon IL
tbe destruction of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid YOU this morning wake up 10
the magnitude Of the theme. l shall take
| all the worlds literature-good mover anu
bad, travels, true and false, histories,
faithful and incorrect, legends, beautl1ul
and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles
all epilogues, all family, CITY,
state and N ational librarles-and pie
them up in pyramid Of literature, ana
then I shall bring to bear upon it some
Grand. glorious, infalhble, unmistakaDle
Christian principles. God help me 10
speak with reference to my last accouh@
and God help you to listen.
charge you, in the first place. to stanu
aloof from all books that give false plct-
ures of human life. Life is neither
tragedy nor a farce Men are not all
either knaves nor heroes. Women are
neither angels nor furies. Ana yeU' Il
YOU depended upon much OF the llterature
of the day, you would get the idea tnaU
life, instead of being something earnest
something practical is fitful and IAN
tastic and extravagant thing. How poor
" prepared are that young man and Wom-
an for the duties of to-day who spent last
night wading through brilliant passages
descriptive of magnificent knavery ana
wickednessl The man will be looking all
day long for his heroine, in the tln shop'
by the forge, in the factory, in the count
ing.room, and he will not find her. and ne
will be dissatisfied A man who gives
himself up to the indiscriminate reading
of novels will be nerveless, insane, and
nuisance. He will be fit neither 1or the
store, nor the shop, nor the field
A woman who gives herself up 10 Ine
indiscriminate reading Of novels Will Dc
untitled for the duties of wife, mother,
sister, daughter There she is, hair as
heveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale,
hands trembling, bursting into tears at
midnight over the fate OF some un-
fortunate lover; IN the day time, when
she ought to be busy, staring by the halt
hour at nothing; biting her finger nails
into the quick. The carpet that was PLAIN
before will be palmer after having wan
dered through a romance all night long
in tesselated halls OF castles.
And your industrious companion
will be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked
in the romance through parks with plumed
prncesses, or lounged in the aroor
with the polished desperate. U, these
confirmed novel readers! They are un-
fitted for this life, which is tremendous
discipline. They know not how TO go
through the furnaces Of trial through
which they must pass, and they are un-
fitted for a world where every thing we
J ss;sin wa achieve by hard, long continuing
| and exhaustive work.
Again, abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture OF
evil. You have read books that had two
elements in them-the good and the bad.
Which stuck to youl The bad! The heart
of must people IS like sieve, which lets
the small particles Of gold fall through,
but keeps the great cinders. Once in
awhile there is mind like loadstone,
which, plunged amid steel and brass nj
ings, gathers up the steel and repels the
brass. But it is generally just the oppo'
site. If you attempt to plunge through
fence of burrs to get one blackberry, you
will get more burrs than blackberries.
You can not afford to read a bad book
however good you are You say:
oThe influence is insignificant"
Itell YOU that the scratch Of pin has
sometimes produced the lock- jaw. Alas,
| if through curiosity, as many do, you pry
into an evil book, your curiosity is as dan
| gerous as that of the man who would take
a torch into a gunpowder mill merely to
see whether it would blow up or not
In menagerie in New York, man put
his arm through the bars Of black
leopard's cage. The animals hide looked
so sleek, and bright and beautiful. He
lust stroked it once. The monster seized
him, and he drew forth hand, torn and
mangled, and bleeding. o, touch not evil
even with the faintest stroke! Though it
may be glossy and beautiful, touch 1T not,
lest you pull forth your soul torn and
bleeding under the clutch of the black
leopard.
But" you say, show can l find out
whether a book is good or bad without
reading itl"
There is always something suspicious
about bad book. / never knew an ex-
ception-something suspicious in the in
dex or style Of illustration. This venom
GUS reptile always carries a warning
rattle.
Again, l charge you to stand off from all
those books which corrupt the imagina-
tion and infiame the passions. / do not
refer now to that kind of book which
the villain has under his coat waiting for
the school to get out, and then, looking
both ways to see that there is no police
man around the block, offers the book to
your son on his way home do not speak
of that kind of literature, but that which
evades the law and comes out in polished
style and with acute plot sounds the tocsin
that rouses up all the baser passions Of the
soul To-day, under the nostrils Of this